Cannes Quotes

Elle Fanning was fifteen when we started [The Neon Demon]. She turned seventeen during the shoot. Four weeks before Cannes, she turned eighteen. She had her prom at Cannes. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

It took Cianfrance 12 years to bring 'Blue Valentine' to the screen after he first conceived it. He found Gosling and Williams early on, and they hung in there with him. The film finally premiered at Sundance 2010, then screened at Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival before landing in theaters in December. ~ Katie Hafner

Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Cannes is a circus, so you have to have fun with it. Everything suddenly becomes funny. And the promotion of a movie - that's where you really need to be a good actor. You need to make journalists believe that what you're saying is just for them and you've never said it before, even when you're talking about the same film over and over again. ~ Mathieu Amalric

After Cannes every year, I end up going to some foreign country I've never been to before and introducing myself to a new religion - I'll go to Bali and research Hinduism, or I'll go to Thailand and get another tattoo from Thai tattoo artist Ajarn Noo Kanpai. ~ Michelle Rodriguez

Ever since the movie premiered at Cannes, I've had a sudden surge of scripts and interest. ~ Berenice Bejo

I think Cannes is usually pretty fair in choosing what will play well to the home festival crowd. ~ Eric Fellner

I really understood what was happening in Cannes. I was in a restaurant during a break and when I came out 2 hours later, 500 people were waiting for me at the exit. It was total chaos. They literally had to carry me to the car. ~ Robert Pattinson

Madness--that's all they have, after working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Going mad is their only way of staying sane. ~ J.G. Ballard

What I fault newspapers for is that day after day they draw our attention to insignificant things whereas only three or four times in our lives do we read a book in which there is something really essential. Since we tear the band off the newspaper so feverishly every morning, they ought to change things and put into the paper, oh, I don't know, perhaps ... Pascal's Pensees! ... and then, in a gilt-edged volume that we open only once in ten years ... we would read that the Queen if Greece has gone to Cannes or that the Princesses de Leon has given a costume ball. This way the proper proportions would be established. ~ Marcel Proust

There has never been a female director who has won an Oscar. There has only been one woman who won at the Cannes Film Festival. ~ Salma Hayek

Work dominates life in Eden-Olympia, and drives out everything else. The dream of a leisure society was the great twentieth-century delusion. Work is the new leisure. Talented and ambitious people work harder than they have ever done, and for longer hours. They find their only fulfillment through work. The men and women running successful companies need to focus their energies on the task in front of them, and for every minute of the day. The last thing they want is recreation. ~ J.G. Ballard

I actually know the moment I became known. It was at the Cannes Film Festival, when they showed 'The Virgin Spring.' I walked into that theater as one person, and I walked out as another. ~ Max Von Sydow

For some time, I thought being a producer would be a more fulfilling career than being an actor. But then I went to a conference in Cannes with 300 other producers, all desperately chasing finance for their projects ... and realized being an actor wasn't so bad after all! ~ William Kircher

The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources. ~ Kristin Scott Thomas

If you approach Cannes with a sense of humor, nothing is that bad. You have to take it for what it is; otherwise, it's silly. ~ Mathieu Amalric

In terms of finding that first international recognition of my work, coming back to Cannes is such a milestone in my life because it began actually with 'Devdas'. ~ Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

The film's success so far involves winning a couple of prizes at Cannes and Sundance, and getting some very nice reviews in newspapers and magazines. That hasn't had a big impact on my life yet. ~ Harvey Pekar

Next time
we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren! ~ Leonard Leventon

Cannes is a very strange place. I tried to show up as best I could and to try not to be cynical. ~ Lili Taylor

There would have been no Beats deal without the Samsung deal. It showed the number one company the importance of connecting with culture, ~ Kanye West

There's this Ryan Gosling quote that I steal all the time - I watched an interview with him in Cannes - and he said picking roles is like listening to songs on the radio: There can be a lot of really great songs in a row, but then one comes on that just makes you want to dance. ~ Emma Stone

If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends. At Eden-Olympia work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work. ~ J.G. Ballard

The first time that I came to Cannes, I think it was in 1953, I was 18 and unknown. ~ Brigitte Bardot

I've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before. ~ Larry Clark

I like doing the promotional work. It's part of the film's process. Cannes was very wonderful to premiere. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

Representative democracy had been replaced by the surveillance camera and the private police force. ~ J.G. Ballard

Sundance felt like a natural fit. I love coming here, and I do think that this festival suits my films rather than most of the festivals I've been to. I'm not going to Cannes, you know. ~ Taika Waititi

People come to Cannes just to advertise their films, not with a particular message. But the advantage is that if you go to the festival, you get so much press coverage in three days that it advertises the film for the rest of the year. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

It's a strange thing that we're actors, and we're always playing a character, and then suddenly we're at a place like Cannes, and we're getting photographed as ourselves, and you're like, 'What do you do?' ~ Rachel Brosnahan

The consumer society hungers for the deviant and unexpected. What else can drive the bizarre shifts in the entertainment landscape that will keep us "buying"? Psychopathy is the only engine powerful enough to light our imaginations, to drive the arts, sciences and industries of the world. ~ J.G. Ballard

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. ~ Roger Ebert

Thank fuck the camera loved him more than he loved himself.
He could recline on silk sheets for cologne or seethe in a sportscar. His life became the silk sheet he had once reclined upon: smooth, compliant and without substance. In pursuit of that something, he enterprised. His upbringing on Lake Como receded as he found himself sipping sangria on a Monte Carlo balcony, basking on his cruiser in Cannes or cheering Chelsea within a glass suite above the stands. Whether he felt dead inside wasn't up for discussion. ~ Charles J. Harwood

I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival. ~ Milos Forman

I've been to Cannes 15 or 16 times, and every time I go, there's a kind of soul-stirring feeling. ~ Gong Li

In 2009, I went to Cannes with a short film in the Kodak emerging program at the American Pavilion. ~ Ryan Coogler

Cannes is a little bit like French wine. There are certain years that people prefer over others. ~ Rob Lowe

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I love the Cannes Film Festival. From the lavish parties and events to the red carpet attire, this star-studded week-long event is where I get a lot of inspiration for hair and fashion. ~ Tabatha Coffey

When I first got to Cannes, I was very insecure about everything, so I put on this extravagant facade. Can you blame me? I was 19. ~ Xavier Dolan

As a director, or just a film fan who wants to enjoy the festival, Cannes is the worst place to be. But it must be a paradise for distributors and importers. ~ Bong Joon-ho

After Cannes, my agent told me to get the next flight to LA. He was right. I had a part in 'Prime Suspect 3' by the end of the week. ~ David Thewlis

When I met Bono at the Cannes Film festival while I was there for the film 'United 93,' he said to me, 'That's a great film, brother. Thank you for your courage in making it.' I plotzed. ~ David Alan Basche

Then we'll take the train to Paris tonight. There is a night train, isn't there? We'll catch it at Cannes. ~ Francoise Sagan

Italy to me is like the mean mother. Whatever I do, it's never good enough. People say I'm the queen of Cannes, but in Italy I get turned down for work. ~ Asia Argento

Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers. ~ Bob Hoffman

My dad made a film called 'Willow' when he was a young filmmaker, which screened at the Cannes film festival, and people were booing afterwards. ~ Bryce Dallas Howard

Each year we go to the Cannes film festival and I tend to have all my friends pile in the back of my car and we'll drive from London. The poor production company think they're only putting me up and suddenly they've got eight people sleeping on my hotel room floor. ~ Jeremy Irvine

Money is being wasted on adverts that go right over a consumer's head. They may win awards at Cannes, but they lose at the cash register. ~ Jerry Della Femina

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody. ~ Leonard Leventon

The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit. ~ J.G. Ballard

Do you not know? Dolls are nothing until someone decides to pick them up and use them. During that time they are whatever they are expected to be. Whatever is commanded of them. You say I am not a doll, but like everyone else that is exactly what you want me to be. A lovely toy you may amuse yourself with... But remember, General, that when playtime is over and the doll has been returned to her shelf, the pretty shell you see? That is what she really is. Everything else is pretend. ~ Roselynn Cannes

Every year there's a jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Getting on the jury is very competitive in France. Not because the French love cinema, but because they love to judge. ~ Craig Ferguson

Sooner or later, all games become serious. ~ J.G. Ballard

Cannes is a sort of gladiators' arena, and that's the fun part of it. When you accept to come here to open the festival, you know you are going to be criticised. I have no problem with the fact that I expose myself and the movie, and it's normal that I can disagree with the way some people feel. ~ Olivier Dahan

I quite like that people tend not to know my name. I remember being at the Cannes film festival for 'All or Nothing.' I looked very different in the film - I had a little greasy bob and no makeup. I went to a dinner after the screening, and everyone completely ignored me. I got a real buzz out of that. ~ Lesley Manville

The kind of sleep that I had during my own film [Certified Copy] screening in Cannes is different. It's not because of the specificity of the film. It was because of my relationship as an author to this film. Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them. Whereas this time, I didn't have that responsibility on my shoulders. ~ Abbas Kiarostami